Delhi boy 'kills' parents, sister for scolding him: Other horrific cases where family members murdered their own
From a princess killed by her godman husband to a mother who killed a daughter she pretended was her sister.
A Delhi teenager was arrested earlier this week for allegedly fatally stabbing his entire family — parents and a younger sister.
According to the Delhi police, Suraj, or Sarnam Verma, 19, then inflicted injuries upon himself, washed the knife, and around 4:30 am, roused his neighbours, saying an intruder had entered his house and attacked his family. Officers now claim that Suraj has confessed to killing all three.
How could a 19-year-old be driven to wiping out his entire family? According to the police, Suraj was “tired of his parents always scolding him”, and his sister telling on him.
Suraj, in the first year of a diploma course in civil engineering, had failed his Class 12 board exams, and resented being told off by his father. He believed he had failed the exams because his dad had him busy supervising the construction of their house, police said.
Suraj was also addicted to the online battle game PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), and, unknown to his parents, had rented a room in Mehrauli, where he and his friends would gather after bunking college to play the game, said officers.
On August 15, his father had reprimanded him for flying kites, and since then, he had been plotting the murder, said the police. Officers said Suraj intended to kill only his father, but when his mother woke up, he stabbed her too. According to the police, he then went to his sister’s room, where his bleeding mother followed him and tried to save her daughter. Suraj, however, allegedly killed both, stabbing his mother 18 times, and sister seven times.
Shocking as the police’s version of the crime is, it is not the only case where family members have turned on each other, snuffing out the lives of those they are supposed to love and nurture. While ‘honour killings’ are disgracefully common in India, here are some other cases of murder within the family, which shook the nation when they were first reported.
Shakereh Khaleeli
This was a tale that involved a princess, a diplomat, a godman, and a most unholy murder.
Shakereh Khaleeli was born a princess. After a life that to onlookers’ eyes must have seemed like a fairy tale, came the end of her marriage, her second marriage, her disappearance, and eventually, the discovery of her murder.
The granddaughter of Mirza Ismail, the former dewan of the princely state of Mysore, the beautiful Shakereh married her cousin, Akbar Khaleeli, at 18. Akbar, an extraordinarily gifted student in school and college, had joined the Indian Foreign Services. In the early 1980s, the Khaleelis lived in different countries, depending on Akbar’s postings, and had four daughters — Sabah, Ezmeth, Rehana and Zeebundeh.
In 1982, the Khaleelis had come across godman Shraddhananda. He eventually came close to the Shakereh, luring her with the promise of a son using his ‘magical powers’ and helping her resolve property matters. Shakereh by then had been one of the known names in Bangalore’s construction world.
In 1985, she divorced her husband and married Shraddhananda in 1986. In 1991, she went missing. Finally, in 1994, it was found that Shraddhananda had buried her alive in a casket. He was convicted for the murder and sentenced to death in 2005. In 2008, it was commuted to life sentence.
Hasnain Warekar
In February 2016, Kasarwadavali in Thane, Maharashtra, suddenly hit national headlines. Hasnain Warekar, a 32-year-old clerk to a chartered accountant whom the town knew well, had allegedly gone on a murder spree, killing 14 members of his family with a meat cleaver.
One sister, 22-year-old Subiya, managed to escape the carnage, and alerted the neighbours with her screams. By the time help arrived, Hasnain had killed his parents, wife, two daughters, three sisters, four nephews, two nieces, and then hanged himself.
From what the police learnt through probe over subsequent months, Hasnain had a debt of Rs 67 lakh, most of it to various relatives. He had also sexually abused one of his sisters, who was mentally challenged, and was very disturbed when he realised his family knew of it.
On the fateful night, said the police, he invited his sisters and their families for dinner, treated them lavishly to food he had spiked, and then killed them one by one.
Chaitali Bhowmik
The small industrial town of Jamshedpur in Jharkhand was rocked in 1997 by the murders of four members of the Bhowmik family, by Chaitali, the daughter of the house, and her lover Syed Rizwan.
Chaitali and Syed Rizwan killed her parents, her minor brother, and her grandmother as they were opposed to their relationship, and dumped their bodies in the septic tank of Chaitali’s house.
They were sentenced to death, but the punishment was later commuted to a life term, as Chaitali had just had a son.
Sheena Bora
The Sheena Bora murder case, of course, kept the country hooked for weeks in 2015. Sheena was allegedly killed by her mother, INX Media co-founder Indrani Mukerjea. Sheena was born to Indrani of an earlier relationship, when she used to be Pori Bora, in Assam.
In Mumbai, Indrani had told everyone Sheena was her sister.
Sheena eventually started dating Rahul Mukerjea, the son of Indrani’s husband and former Star CEO Peter Mukerjea, from an earlier marriage. Indrani was opposed to this relationship, and, according to the police, in 2012, picked Sheena in her car, killed her with the help of her driver and her former husband, and dumped the body in a forest.
Three years later, the driver was arrested for possessing arms illegally, and during interrogation, spilled the beans over Sheena’s murder, as he was “repentant”. Both Indrani and Peter are now in jail, and have filed for a divorce.